Seven years ago, Unionbank of the Philippines made a brave move in launching the country’s first Cyber Bank Account: EON. Weeks after it was launched, my college friends and I

opened our accounts without having to shell out a big amount of money as initial deposit, nor to maintain it. What’s the catch then? It does not pay you interest (if your ADB is less than 10k) and you just need to pay for the ATM card. Even comes with a free @eon.unionbankph.com email address.

Some people, especially the big guns in the Philippine Banking industry thought of the project as crazy. But to the CEO of UBP, Augusto Ortiz, the concept behind EON is very simple: their target market then (Y2000) were the yuppies (including me!) in college or just got out of college. Hence, they do not have money, yet. Years later, these yuppies will eventually find jobs or establish their own businesses, and will utilize EON for their financial transactions.

Augusto Ortiz is indeed right! Around a year or two ago, UBP was named as the Philippines’ (and I think Southeast Asia’s) most soundest bank. Now that they had acquired iBank (another great bank — IMHO), they had also launched the new EON eBanking website: